There’s more plot in this IESB-hosted trailer for Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘R Treat than there was in the entirety of Superman Returns (which Dougherty co-wrote with Dan Harris): you’ve got Anna Paquin making like Little Red Riding Hood at a costume party (and being stalked down a tree-lined lane), Dylan Baker menacing the fat kid from Bad Santa whilst carving a pumpkin, a disheveled Brian Cox blasting off a shotgun, and some foreboding talk about "The Halloween School Bus Massacre". And none of it ties together to make a case for you seeing the movie.
I haven’t been following Trick ‘r Treat too closely (once I discovered it wasn’t a remake of the classic 1986 rock-horror extravaganza starring Skippy from Family Ties, my interest nose-dived), so it wasn’t until I checked out its IMDb page that I realized it’s essentially an anthology. That explains the incoherence. Hell, given my soft spot for anthology horror flicks regardless of quality (if pressed, I could probably think of something nice to say about The Offspring), I actually want to see the movie now.
So why isn’t Warner Brothers advertising this as four "interwoven tales of terror" or some such marketing nonsense? Are anthologies suddenly verboten in the wake of Grindhouse? I suppose the current trailer could work on its own terms as a montage of vague menace; the target audience for this type of film just needs to be sold on jump scares and intimations of sex. If that’s all Trick ‘r Treat is, then kindly disregard the above.